BIRMINGHAM | I sat down with Adam Jacobi, the publisher of Go Iowa Awesome, part of the Rivals.com family, on Wednesday to discuss the Hawkeyes, their season, what Auburn should expect from Fran McCaffery's team and more.
What has the season been like for the Iowa Hawkeyes?
It has been an unorthodox year in a lot of ways. They have two sixth-year seniors, neither of which the team really knew were going to be coming back this year until they announced it. They're both on their covid years, Filip Rebrača and Connor McCaffery. They've been sort of the rocks of this team, and they've really needed it because there's been a couple of times where but this season has been sort of on the precipice of falling off in a bad way.
After a decent start, they lost three in a row, including to Eastern Illinois. Objectively one of the worst teams in Division-I. I think on KenPom, it's rated as the biggest upset of the entire season. Absolutely no business losing that game. And they had some guys out too, but that was a situation where it can really derail an entire season.
And then they lost their first two Big Ten games as well. So they're sitting at 8-6. And at that point, you're 8-6, 0-3 in the Big Ten; you're not even thinking about the tournament. So they go down 20 points early to Indiana at home. Vibes are awful. They turn it around with a big comeback, end up winning that game, end up stringing some wins together, ended up finishing over .500 in the Big Ten.
But then also, later in the season, they had started to put a few losses together too. They're down to Michigan State. I want to say it was 12 points with about a minute left. A situation where in no circumstances are you expecting to win that game, and then they pull off an absolute miracle of a comeback, sort of regenerate the tournament run for the season and end up here.
What should Auburn expect from Iowa?
So you don't really know what version of this team you're going to get game to game. And so it could be very dangerous for their opponent or, you know, it could be very beneficial. It depends on if the shots are dropping or not. And this is the team that depends very much on getting hot and staying hot with its jumpers. Sometimes it works, and if it does, anyone can go down to them. But anyone can beat them, too, Eastern Illinois included.
What makes Kris Murray so special?
He's an interesting case. Both he and Keegan (4th pick in the 2022 NBA Draft) were virtually unrecruited coming out of high school. Keegan had one D-1 offer, and it was from Western Illinois, and they had just lost their coach, and their entire recruiting class had decommitted, so he wasn't even sure if the offer was still valid. They go down to prep school, and they both grow to about 6-foot-8, which is a lot different from 6-foot-5 or 6-foot-6.
They play against some really good competition, put up some really good numbers and come up here. A lot of development that they need to do. Keegan stays about one year ahead of Kris, so he puts up All-American-type numbers his sophomore year while Kris is just breaking the lineup as sort of a sixth man. And then Kris follows that same path, and here he is as a 20-point, seven-rebound a game guy. And really, about the only difference between the two, well, I guess there are two big differences. One is Keegan's about a year ahead in that same exact progression, but also, uh, Kris Murray's left-handed. So it's a little bit different, and really that's the only way that we know that Kris is not just Keegan Murray. We know he can't shoot left-handed.
But he is very talented and plays within himself very well. He's more of a finesse guy than you would expect for somebody of that size. Same even keel. You don't see any demonstrative behavior from either of them on the court. Keegan's got that little bit more of killer instinct than we've seen from Kris so far. Although, in the win at Indiana, we saw Kris Murray really, really turn into a dominant player. And if he plays like that in the tournament again, Iowa's gonna cause some real problems for people.
His defense, you see steals out of him, you see blocks out of him. He is happy to take the team's most difficult defensive assignment. But a consummate teammate and can get going from deep especially, so Auburn is really gonna want to play physical with him. Try to take him out of his rhythm. And if that includes some hard defense in making the referees call some fouls, so be it. And from what I've gathered, sounds like Auburn would be more than happy to do that.
Who is Iowa's X-factor?
Payton Sandfort just won Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year. And he has, it's either six games of 20 points with five against Big Ten opponents, or it's five and four against Big Ten opponents. So he has multiple 20-point games in all, but some of them came in tough games. Yeah. He's a shooter from deep, and if he gets going, he's got the purest stroke on the team, including Kris.
He's a bit of a straw that stirs the drink on defense too.
What weakness of Iowa could Auburn take advantage of?
I don't want to necessarily characterize it as mental because I don't know that for sure, but anytime that you get a team that depends so much on getting hot and staying hot on offense, if they come up across a defense that sort of takes them out of that rhythm and knows how to keep them out of it, that's very difficult that we've seen from this team to sort of get around.
The perimeter defense is also not great either.
